Saturday, November 29, 2008
Glaciers are growing again
Since you will not see this news in your newspaper, on network television, or inside Newsweek, I make it available as a public service: Glaciers in Norway and Alaska are growing again, in some cases for the first time in 250 years. Make of it what you will.
4 Comments:
By 
smitty1e, at
Sat Nov 29, 08:36:00 AM:
"I could make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl..."
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Nov 29, 09:06:00 AM:
Yet another sign of our impending doom as a species.
By 
, at
Sat Nov 29, 10:07:00 AM:
Did you hear the one about the guy who froze to death in the deep south......? The coroner reported the cause of death: global warming.
When asked for comment, former VP Al Gore said, "HEY... IT COULD HAPPEN......"
By Brian, at
Sun Nov 30, 03:20:00 PM:
As they say, always click the link. And since the first link goes to Anthony Watts, that doesn't do you any good. Clicking through then gets to unusually cold Alaska, where regional cold isn't contrary to AGW. The other link is in Norwegian. Translation here is rough, but it seems more ambiguous than the way Watts portrayed it:
"
Senioringeniør Hallgeir Elvehøy in the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) said that the NTB in a note to the message that brefronten in 22 of 32 surveyed glaciers in Norway have pulled back in the past year.
- If pålagringen of snow on the glaciers continues, the withdrawal stop or brefrontene again move forward, "said Elvehøy.
He said that NVE is not yet done the calculations that will tell how much the glaciers that glacier, ski and Svartisen added on the last two years. But it is clear that this development does not apply in Jotunheimen glaciers, and in northern Norway no other glaciers than Svartisen.
LES: Now growing glaciers!
LES: Norwegian glaciers shrinking
Brefrontmålinger
NVE brefrontmålinger shows that the decline to brefrontene less in 2008 than in 2007. While many glaciers in Western Norway and the Nordland had highlighted framstøt 1990s, the trend has been fairly rapid decline since 2000, the NVE in an article on the authority's website.
Among the 32 glaciers flows are covered by the polls, are the only four who carried out from 2007 to 2008. But here is the voice of either very small increases, or increases that are not considered real.
LES: ski disappears
LES: Giant Cracks in Greenlandic glacier
The first is the case with Buer glacier in Odda and Styggedalsbreen in West Jotunheimen, where the increase in just a few meters explained by adaptation after large decline in 2007.
Store and Suphellebreen for Bøyabreen - both in Fjærland in Sogn - is not considered the increase to be real, because polls rasmasser comes from glaciers. Bretungene on these two glaciers have not caught up.
Variable image
NVE has also published a graph of the development for eight glaciers in the period from 1982 to 2008. The graph shows a varying picture.
Brefronten to Nigardsbreen - an arm of the glacier - is almost 200 meters ahead of the terrain in 2008 than in 1982, but has pulled back somewhat since 2002-2003. Nigardsbreen is the only one of the eight glaciers flows that are larger in 2008 than in 1982.
Step Holt Breen - another arm of the glacier - in the same period declined by almost 200 meters.
Hell Stugu Breen in Jotunheimen have throughout this period declined year by year, and was in 2008 more than 200 meters less than in 1982.
Vikingtiden
For the other five glaciers shows the growth in the late 1990s, and then decline, so that the glaciers are now smaller than in 1982.
These five glaciers are Briksdalsbreen (glacier), Rembesdalsskåka and Midtdal Breen (both Hardangerjøkulen), Buer Breen (ski) and Enga Breen (Svartisen).
Briksdalsbreen in Stryn has pulled back 430 meters since 1999, so that the whole Briksdal lake is now ice-free.
Hallgeir Elvehøy says Briksdalsbreen was very little in 1950 - and 1960s. But he believes that this glacier now hardly have been so low since the Viking era, or before "the little ice age", that is, before 1350"
